While I recognise and acknowledge the need for commercial fly tyers, I have been indoctrinated against them by an expression my immigrant English dry fly purist grandfather told me when I was young about why whose flies I should use when fly fishing is important. He said,......

"using some else's flies is like getting someone else to father your children for you, when it is more fun to do it yourself!"

When it comes to fishing with artificials, I have always enjoyed making my own.

While not for more than twenty plus years, for a time I made my own hard bodied lures. Even got some expensive chuck tools specifically made up for my wood lathe to hold several pieces of timber at once to turn to them the shape I needed. Then I would cut them lengthwise to place in wire loops, then glue, then clamp back together, then heaps of sanding - before applying 10+ coatings of paint and finish with an airbrush. Add split rings and hooks, then go fishing. Each lure -  many hours, weeks, if not months in the making.

Using my own personally hand crafted wooden lures made for specific species and locations elevated any captures beyond anything else. The 'yahoos' and screams of exaltation were always more loud and exuberant then for fish caught on any mass produced lure.

Back to tying one's own flies, for me it elevates my fly fishing experience before, then exponentially and additionally impacting when on the water casting that fly to fish that reacts to the fly I made. This could be surmised in a quote from an awesome passage in the book - "Fly Tying by Fishing Guides" by Toni Lolli. Where it says......,

"There's an old saying that fly fishing is the most fun you can have while you are standing up. If that's true, fly tying is foreplay."

If this premise holds true and you add the knowledge of the necessity and benefits of sexual foreplay;...... 

the benefit of making your own flies then implies, that the more foreplay (i.e the more fly tying), the more the expectation, and thus, the more the eventual climax and in turn deeper enjoyment.

So I tie my own flies, and I tie a lot. I love my fly tying as unmitigated and absolutely necessary SWOFFING foreplay. Why tie three flies when I could tie using a whole box of hooks, if not several sizes of boxes of hooks.

Every fly tied is like that first subtle and delicate caress, that intimate delicate stage of what is to come. Every finished fly takes me one pulsating sensation closer to the ultimate tightening of fulfilment and ecstasy. In fly fishing terms, the sighted fish, the follow, the take, the tight taught line and the vibrant fish struggling against the strain, ending with the triumphant release of the trophy (a trophy regardless of size) to fight again.

Even writing about fly tying is exciting me right now.

So, I don't know which I want to more now:- write some more, or tie some flies, or go SWOFFING, or find my wife!!!

I do know that when I get home after SWOFFING using my own flies or when I have just tied 20 or so flies to use on the next planned trip - I am more amorous towards my wife. So maybe it's SWOFFING and fly tying that's actual physical foreplay for me as well.

When I am on the water, selecting and tying on a fly that I have previously tied for a specific application at a location I plan to fish for a species I knew would be there for a specific food source or reason - THIS IS what SWOFFING is all about. (My wife says I am easily please!)

What was that romantic quote out of the movie Jerry Maguire, that all the women swoon over?---- Zellweger says to Cruise, "you 'had me' at hello".

Well for me, SWOFFING 'had me' too - at the fly tying.

I hope fly tying is that for you too.

Enjoy! Go tie some flies. Experience some fly tying foreplay, before reaching your climax!

see more at http://swoffingntwaters.blogspot.com.au